San Diego’s First Couple of teen fiction

They were going to write the book together. It would be a modern-day fairy tale with some dark twists and then a happy ending. The narrator would be a ghost.

Tom McNeal would start the novel and then pass it along to his wife, Laura Rhoton McNeal. Back-and-forth they would go, a formula that had worked before on four critically-admired books for young adults.

He had a hard time getting under way, though. He couldn’t find the right tone, couldn’t get the characters to feel genuine enough to care about. He set the book aside and wrote other things.

Years passed, and when he finally figured out how to make the story come together, she read the first section and told him to keep going. “It’s a very different kind of book,” she said. “It would have been hard to work on it together.”

So he wrote it alone. “Far Far Away” came out in June to great reviews. In September, it made the longlist of ten nominees for the National Book Award, among the most prestigious of literary prizes. Last month, it was named one of the five finalists in the Young People’s Literature category.

The winner will be announced Wednesday at a fancy dinner in New York. The prize comes with a medallion and $10,000.

If you think his wife is upset, jealous about how it turned out, think again. Remember when he struggled to get the book started and wrote other things? So did she. One of them was a young-adult book called “Dark Water,” about a girl in Fallbrook who befriends a migrant worker.

Three years ago, it was a finalist for the National Book Award, too. (Another novel won.)

“I’m so glad he got us invited to the party again,” a laughing Laura McNeal said one recent weekday afternoon at the home in Coronado they share with their two teen sons. “It’s the book prom!”

Actually, it’s three days of readings and other events in New York City. It’s spending time around literary stars like E.L. Doctorow and George Saunders and Jhumpa Lahiri, all honorees this year, It’s having your book forever decorated with a sticker denoting it as among the chosen few.

It’s a big deal, win or lose. Having it happen in your family once is a wonder. But twice?

The back and forth

Of course they met at a writer’s conference.

This was in Park City, Utah. He was doing a reading of one of his short stories. She saw his photo in the conference brochure, thought he was handsome, and came up with a ruse to introduce herself. It worked.

He was attracted to her, too, and for a long time remembered her as wearing a green dress that day. The dress was blue. “I think what is telling about that is, green is my favorite color,” he said. “Always has been, still is, and I think that’s just the color I needed her to be in.”

They got married in 1993. Three years later they did a picture book together, “The Dog Who Lost His Bob,” a tribute to a pet Doberman. Then she started a novel, about a girl named Clara. She had him read the beginning of it. He asked if he could write the next chapter.

And so began the back and forth. She wrote from the girl’s point of view. He wrote from the boy’s. “That was really fun,” she said. “It was like reading a book and writing a book at the same time, two of my favorite things.”

The book was “Crooked,” which won the California Book Award for juvenile fiction. Then came three other young-adult collaborations, “Zipped,” which won the PEN Center USA award for children’s literature, “The Decoding of Lana Morris,” and “Crushed.”

Both McNeals — he’s in his mid-60s, she’s in her mid-40s — used to be teachers, so they’re familiar with the young-adult audience. “They are so endearingly hopeful,” Laura McNeal said. “You want to tell them something that will make them feel that hope longer — something real and true and comforting. That’s what young adult fiction is trying to do at its best. You’re not trying to lie, but you’re also not trying to induce despair.”

Tom McNeal prefers to think of the books as “coming of age” novels, a description with a proud lineage in literature. “I think the standards can be quite high, if you think of ‘A Separate Peace’ or ‘Great Expectations,’ books like that,” he said.

With “Far Far Away,” he had a particular audience in mind — their sons, Sam and Hank. He wanted to write something they could enjoy now, but also something they could come back to when they’re older.

“With any luck, the book can be read by a 12-year-old and he will love the story and be moved forward by the current of events,” he said. “But I would also like to think that someone older could read the book and find things that will help you see life from a broader aperture, with a better sense of proportion about those things that are important and those things that aren’t.”

Building the house

He’s semiretired now, but for many years Tom McNeal had a day job, as a general contractor. It gave him the financial cushion to write, which he describes as “a compulsive need.” In addition to the teen fiction, he’s written short stories (one was made into the movie “Tully”) and two novels for grown-ups (the last, “To Be Sung Underwater,” made several several lists of 2011’s best books).

There are parallels between building a house and writing a book. “In both cases, you’re trying to construct something you can live in for a long time,” he said, “something that expresses your idea of home and permanence and beauty.”

Those are themes in “Far Far Away,” a story about a boy named Jeremy who lives in a town called Never Better and hears the voice of a ghost, Jacob Grimm, the older of the Grimm Brothers of fairy tale fame. The story has enchanted cakes and a copper-haired girl and children who go missing.

What it doesn’t have is his wife as the co-author, although that was the original plan. She doesn’t mind. She found her solo voice, too, and both said any future collaboration would depend on the right idea.

Writing solo, after all, has left them with something else to share — the honor of being finalists for the National Book Award.